Anna Leonard - At Your Command

At Your Command

Anna Leonard

www.millsandboon.co.uk

“My name is Anthony. It is my duty to serve your pleasure.”

Once upon a time, Susannah Mackenzie had been fanciful. But she never expected to inherit a genie of her own! It seemed the brooch Susannah’s great-aunt left her held more than she thought. Susannah was quickly intrigued by her alluring, seductive companion—and soon she couldn’t help but imagine all the ways Anthony could please her….

Your aunt left something for you.

Susannah sat back in her chair and stared at the screen, her head tilted as she tried to parse the words to make sense. Left something for her? The e-mail had come from a clerk at some law firm Susannah had never heard of, with the header: “Regarding the Estate of Susannah Mackenzie.”

She was Susannah Mackenzie. All right, Susannah Mackenzie West. But then she wasn’t the only one: she had been named for her great-aunt, a woman she had never actually met, thanks to a falling-out between the woman and Susannah’s grandmother, the year Susannah’s parents had died. The older Susannah had lived in Paris, and not come back for the funeral. “Just you and me now, Su,” her grandmother had said after her parents’ funeral, and she, grief-bound, an orphan at ten, had never questioned it.

So, curious—she had not known the old woman was still alive, much less that she had died recently enough for there to be legal matters pending—Susannah opened the e-mail.

A brief greeting, and then the news that, yes, Susannah Mackenzie had died the year previous, and that they would be sending her inheritance via registered mail, no need to come into the office for it, this was merely a courtesy notification.

A quick search of the Internet confirmed that the law firm was legitimate; apparently, reading the will out to family members only happened in movies.

Susannah read the e-mail again, chewing on one bitten-to-the-quick fingertip, looking for any clue as to what she might be getting. The lawyer said that it would be delivered, not handed over the way you might talk about a check.

Another time she might have called the lawyer, if only to find out about other unknown relatives, but there were a dozen or more e-mails waiting for her to open and respond to, phone calls she had to return, and a meeting that was supposed to start in ten minutes; an unknown bequest from a woman she’d never met would have to wait for some other time.

The traffic on route 95 to New Haven for her commute home wasn’t terrible, considering it was prime leaf-peeping season, but when she walked up the front steps of her town house that evening, she could hear Maxwell barking, anxious to be let out.

“All right, I hear you, I hear you, wait half a minute, okay?”

As though he understood, the barking paused, followed by the sound of claws against the tile, and even as Susannah let herself into the apartment, thirty pounds of dog pushed against her legs, cold nose pressing into her hand as she bent down to pet him.

“Hey, guy.”

If anyone except her or his dog-walker, Alex, came in the door first, Max was as likely to pin them with a snarl and a glare. With her, he reverted back to the 7-month-old Rottie-mix puppy he’d been five years ago, when he picked her out of the wire cages at the adoption center and demanded she bring him home, and never mind that she’d gone in looking for a kitten.

“Nobody tried to break in, huh? Nobody stole your blankie?”

Max, hearing “blankie,” raced into the living room to retrieve the scrap of yellow cloth, bringing it to her with an air of triumph. She had worried about leaving him alone, with her hours at the office running so long, but so long as Max had his blankie to chew on and Alex to walk with midday, he seemed content.

“You’re probably better off than I am,” she said, dropping the mail onto the counter and reaching for Max’s leash. It had been the kind of day they didn’t warn you about in interviews, for fear of scaring everyone out of the job pool. The meetings had all lasted twice as long as expected, with half as much getting done, and her in-box was still filled with e-mails she’d have to go over and reply to tonight, after dinner.

But first, Max needed walking.

When they returned, Max having done his thing, strained after a squirrel and barked at two cats, the UPS truck was pulled up in front of the complex, and the delivery guy was walking up the steps to Susannah’s unit.

“Hi.” She came up behind him, careful to keep Max safely heeled. “You need me to sign for that?”

The delivery guy gave a quick glance at Max, then nodded. “You number 12J, then yep.”

“Max, stay,” she ordered, just to be on the safe side, and reached for the electronic clipboard, scrawling her name with the stylus and accepting the package, all the while juggling Max’s leash and her keys.

The return address matched the law office that had sent her the e-mail. The package was small, about half the size of a shoe box, and surprisingly light.

“So much for gold doubloons,” she said to Max as she let them both into the apartment, unhooking his leash and looping it over the doorknob. “Maybe it’s bearer bonds? Or uncut diamonds?”

More likely it was old letters or photographs; of interest if they shed light on that twenty-year-old rift between her grandmother and grandaunt, but no real value.

Normally she would have put the package aside, to be looked at after dinner, but it wasn’t every day you got an inheritance, much less a mysterious one, and curiosity won out over hunger. Susannah took the box with her over to the sofa, kicking off her shoes and curling her legs under her as she tore off the wrapping, revealing a plain white box, tinged with a yellow that suggested it was several years old, at least, underneath. “Curiouser and curiouser,” she said.

At her feet, Max curled up and tucked his nose under his paws, completely disinterested now that his needs had been satisfied.

Lifting the lid of the box revealed a black jewelry box, about the size of her palm. Susannah felt her heart beat faster in anticipation, which surprised her. She wasn’t much for jewelry: a simple gold cross on a chain, a few earrings she picked up at craft fairs, and her college signet ring the sum total of her possessions, but maybe there was something about old jewelry that was different?

“What do you think, Max? A bracelet? A necklace? A diamond ring?” Visions of being able to sell it for enough money to buy a new car flashed through her head. Max lifted his head to look at her, yawned, his muzzle opening wide and showing off his pink tongue, then returned to his snooze position.

Lifting the lid, Susannah wasn’t sure if she was disappointed, or enchanted. The object that lay on the white velvet bed was barely the length of a toothpick, about the width of her pinkie. But the metal had the white-gold tone that even Susannah recognized as platinum, and the design, a combination of squares and arches set with tiny square-cut diamonds around a larger sapphire, was clearly Art Deco in origin. Considering what little she knew about her great-aunt, it was probably a real antique, not a reproduction.

“It’s a pin,” she told Max. “A bar pin. Like you’d wear …” She had no idea how you would wear such a thing, actually. She supposed it could be worn on the lapel or a suit, or in a scarf. Since her job didn’t call for formal suits—they had gone to business casual years ago—and she wasn’t one for scarves, it seemed useless.